Just when you seem to yourself nothing but a flimsy web of questions, you are given the questions of others to hold in the emptiness of your hands, s… - Denise Levertov

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Just when you seem to yourself nothing but a flimsy web of questions, you are given the questions of others to hold in the emptiness of your hands, songbird eggs that can still hatch if you keep them warm, butterflies opening and closing themselves in your cupped palms, trusting you not to injure their scintillant fur, their dust. You are given the questions of others as if they were answers to all you ask. Yes, perhaps this gift is your answer.

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About Denise Levertov

Denise Levertov (24 October 1923 – 20 December 1997) was a British-American poet.

Biography information from Wikiquote

Also Known As

Birth Name: Priscilla Denise Levertoff
Alternative Names: Priscilla D Levertoff Priscilla Denise Levertov
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Additional quotes by Denise Levertov

Hugh Kenner, in a lecture, beautifully defined what poets seek if they really are poets) as “the power to make things as moving as the things they have been moved by.

The roses tremble; oh, the sunflower's eye
Is opened wide in sad expectancy.
Westward and back the circling swallows fly,
The rooks' battalions dwindle near the hill.

That low pulsation in the east is war:
No bell now breaks the evening's silent dream.
The bloodless clarity of evening's sky
Betrays no whisper of the battle-scream.

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